A question of good customer service

Even though it has been almost 11 months since I purchased my O2 XDA IIi PDA phone from Harvey Norman (Ikano Power Centre), the bad customer service and after sales service still leaves a bitter memory.

What rekindle this bad memory was a friend of mine who had intended to buy an electrical appliance from Harvey Norman and he asked me for my opinion on Harvey Norman. And guess what was my reply? A rhetoric of what bad customer service I endured from Harvey Norman.

To recap the incident, my purchase was a defective product (dead pixel on the screen). This was forgiveable as I did not expect the staff of HN to check every item they received from the distributor. But what was annoying was the staff and 'so-called' manager in charge of the PDA section. They received the defective PDA and said they will let me know when the PDA will be rectified. No problem with that, but then no reply from them for almost 3 weeks and I had to go to HN to find out the status of the repair.

I made an appointment with the sales staff that sold the PDA to me. Guess what? the staff was on leave and the 'so-called' manager did not even know of my appointment. I asked if he was the manager in charge and he replied he was. Sales staff missing and manager in the dark. Asked him to check his returned merchandise list to find out the status of my PDA. I don't think he even knew where the list was kept and obviously not an idea of my PDA's status. Man, was I really irritated by then. Imagine a new PDA purchase but for almost one month, no PDA.

Normally, I don't blow my top that too often (especially in public) but in this case, I got pretty angry and annoyed and lodged an official complaint on this to HN. Bur to my surprise, HN has no complaint form. All the counter staff could do was an empty piece of paper. Even an empty piece of paper will do, so I wrote my complaint and sealed it in an envelope handed to the sales counter staff.

But this is not the end of the incident, to date I have not received any acknowledgement from the management of Harvey Norman. That's right up to today!!!

I did eventually received my repaired PDA a couple of days later. But since that incident, I have not step into Harvey Norman. And my advice to all: DON'T PATRONIZE HARVEY NORMAN.

No wonder, Civil Servant - No energy

Read in the Star - 20 to 30% of civil servant doing part-time jobs (some even have 3 jobs part-time). No wonder they don't have the energy to do the job properly. - Extra long tea breaks, no response or reply when you write to them.

Any wonder why we always complain about the service levels of the civil servants. Can we blame them - low salary, no respect from public. Cost of living goes up, petrol price goes up, toll rates goes up. Ever wondered why corruption seems so hard to get rid of?

A waste of money

Sometimes, I wonder what kind of people we have running the sport bodies? For that matter, the people running the government, local / city councils, etc.

For example, the 'high performance sports centre' in UK. Why spend RM69m to refurbish the current building? (Scaled down from RM500m). What benefits will we really get from this project? Any Malaysian with common sense will know that you can't make an average athlete into a superstar no matter how good the sports facilities or the trainer is. This I learnt from Simon Cowell (American Idol judge) who said "I cannot make a mediocre singer into a superstar". You either have it or not. The money is better used to unearth potential stars and train these stars.

Where's the courtesy?

This happened to me during one of my CNY dinner in one of the Lala Chong restaurant (branch), as normal, we placed our order with the head waiter. After about 20 minutes, the dishes started arriving at our tables.

But for one of the dishes - vegetables, it was not what we had specifically ordered. But what riled us up was the waiter(s) insistence that the vege dish was what we ordered. Even the head waiter (after consulting another waiter) concurred with us. But there was this waiter which carried the dish to the chef and returning to our table, insisting it was our order.

Needless to say, we did not accept that particular dish. Now if the chef or waiter had said 'They had run out of the vegetable we ordered and suggest a replacement vege", we wouldn't have minded. But to insist that we ordered that particular dish, what the gall! As if we did not know our vege.

Another incident happened last week, in one of the coffeshop near my house. As normal, we were thinking of places to go for dinner and ended at a coffeshop where we have not patronised. Placed our order and waited...waited...waited... for more than 30 minutes. Other patrons who came later, had their dinner and left. But we were still waiting for our dinner, what we noticed was this, they were serving those who were on take-away orders.

Not one to take this slight, we duly cancelled our order and placed our order with another stall. Food came in less than 5 minutes. Definitely will not patronise this stall in the future. Again, not a word of apology.

Busybody motorists

Yesterday, whilst on the way to Petaling Jaya, was caught in heavy traffic along Federal Highway. After slowly moving, crawling to be exact, I discovered the reason for the traffic jam - tada! - the police was having a roadblock along the motorcycle lane. This was confirmed by a news article in The Star Online - Click here for the article

The roadblock was not the issue but the motorists who slow down, out of curiosity to see what's happening, causing the traffic jam. Better still, on the opposite side of the highway, you guess it, also heavy traffic.

By the way, it must have been pretty 'profitable' for the police, imagine more than 2,500 summonses. Each summon, say worth RM30. Total takings for 4 hour operation = RM75k

AYAM TELUR - I am the law

Is it just me or am I seeing more motorcyclists on the Federal Highway? Hey, I thought the bikes were not allowed on the highway. Other than the occasional roadworks on the motorcycle lane, the bikers were allowed onto the highway.

It is another case of the Malaysian symptom - "As long as I am not caught, SAYA BOLEH". This is happening not just by those on the bikes but in nearly every type of activities you can think of - Rubbish dumps, queue jumping motorists, squatters, illegal extensions, etc.

It never fails to amaze me how bold these law-breakers are. I read an article by Citizen Nades (the Sun) where he wrote on getting free land from the state government. In short - Keep doing wrong and if more people are doing the same, it becomes the norm and eventually accepted as a right.

How sad. Wrong becomes Right.

Old habits die hard!

I've been leaving earlier than normal to work (around 6.30am daily) and I noticed almost everyday this Indonesian maid washing the employer's SUV. Sigh! I kind of wonder what type of person is the employer? Once a week even twice a week is reasonable, but daily!!!

The vehicle is not small, this poor maid has to use a stool to reach the upper portion of the vehicle. Come on! If he is able to hire the maid, I am sure he is able to spend RM5/RM6 for a car wash.

Talking about daily car washing, my neighbours on either side of my house, are literally slaves to their car. One will wash early in the morning and the other in the evening or when he reaches home.

My house is built on a slight incline, so the water flows down and gathers at the house down the road. This daily routine by my two neighbours has literally cause damage to the road. Several potholdes have developed and around the driveway to my house, well it has moss growing.

I just wonder if they were to miss washing their cars one or two days, are they going to have withdrawal symptoms? They looked as if they are addicted to car washing. El Nino or El Nina, it will make no difference to them, they are going to continue washing their cars.

I am just wondering what its gonna take to make them stop this daily routine. Hopefully the answer to my prayer will come soon as one of my neighbours has put up a 'For Sale' sign.

Official Silly Act (OSA)

Looks like everyone is jumping on the bandwagon, so why not me? Here's my RM2m worth...

Why would any minister disclose 'official documents' that will show how naive (read stupidity, selfishness, ....fill in the blanks) they were in their negotiation, legal acumen, financial wrangling. So the easy way out - OSA. (My acronym for Only Safe Avenue, Only Silly Administrators).

Now if the toll operators were really not making profits, I propose the government takes over all the toll operations. I am sure the toll operators would rush to hand over a loss making concern. The government would save on the subsidies (I read somewhere, every 3 years toll hike). Abolish road tax and setup a petrol tax. The more you travel, the more you contribute.

Pros and cons of a petrol tax, that's for another day.

Toll going up and up and away...

Eversince the toll hike on Jan 1, the traffic passing through my housing estate in Cheras, seems to be heavier than the previous year. What used to take me an hour to get to my office in PJ, now takes me an extra half an hour.

I used to leave at 7.30am to 7.45am and reach my office before 8.30am, now I am starting out at 6.30am to 6.45am, and I get to reach my office in about an hour's time. It seems people are getting up and leaving for work/school earlier to avoid the traffic jams.

Are our government for real?

First, they get into a dumb contract with the toll operators. Anyone with a sane mind would not get into a contract where if the other party were to make a loss, they would have to compensate the other party. Man, I would love to be the other party. Why work so hard to make profit, the government will make up the difference!

Second, they refuse to release details of the dumb contract. I would love to know which ministry and lawyers acted on the government's behalf to come up with the contract. And our government can approve such a deal??? I just think the government is trying to save face and someone's backside by not disclosing the contract. They will look so naive and stupid to agreeing to such a contract.

Third, DBKL is looking to impose a 'toll' to enter congested areas in KL. I wonder would this study be any different from a much earlier plan suggested long, long, time ago (it seems ancient now). Will this plan succeed? I doubt very much. Why? Because Malaysia Tak Boleh. The LRT does not cover major business areas and sardine-packed during peak hours. Our RapidKL is only rapid when serving the outskirts of KL. By the way, congestion toll money goes to which ministry? DBKL (Dewan Bandaraya kurang layak) does not deserve these monies. For all you know, they will be changing the lamp posts around the city instead of solving the congestions.

"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."

- Peter Drucker -